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California Court Rules Anti-Texting Laws Apply to Checking Maps While Driving
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It's to protect others. The justification is the same reason you're legally required to have liability insurance for your car while collision and comprehensive are optional. Both talking and texting while driving were legal for many years. California had a very long time to gather data prior to passing such laws, and really when you're driving, you're not supposed to pay attention to things that are unrelated to the road.
Hence, the reckless driving law.
There is absolutely no need to create a new law for every possible way people can drive recklessly.
No. Read the article. The issue isn't what you are doing in the phone, it's that your hand is off the wheel so you can hold the phone.
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Pull over and look at a map when you are out of the flow of traffic potentially pulling dumb stunts like realizing that's your turn and you are in the wrong lane and diving in front of folks etc.
Not a hard concept
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If the cop is controlling a motor vehicle that is on a road and in motion and he's not looking at the road with hands on steering wheel then he's as much a potential safety hazard as a non cop. So yes, it needs to work both ways.
Good luck with that.
I can understand this to an extent, I was using maps this weekend while driving, and it is somewhat dangerous - of course, I don't have a mount for my phone. One thing that would be nice would be to set the +&- buttons to zoom in & out. But seriously, driving drunk is illegal too. People aren't going to stop doing this.
Typical, naive opinion. Some governments already prohibit smoking in a private home. Such nannies would not think twice about prohibiting conversation in a private car. All they'd have to do is conduct a PR campaign to convince a majority of dolts it was in their best interests, or the current favorite, "It's for the children."
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Court's decision doesn't meant you can't use your phone's mapping app
I think what the court is saying is that it is ok to use your phone mapping app while driving, you just can't push any buttons on the screen while driving. For example, you could set up the maps app for driving directions while you are not driving, use the app when driving. If you needed to access another map function or change locations, you should stop the car to make the changes.
I think what the court is saying is that it is ok to use your phone mapping app while driving, you just can't push any buttons on the screen while driving. For example, you could set up the maps app for driving directions while you are not driving, use the app when driving. If you needed to access another map function or change locations, you should stop the car to make the changes.
When you are lost, you are free to find your way to a place where you can park your car, then ask your phone for driving instructions. If you are incapable of driving safely if you don't know where you are, then you shouldn't be driving.
This is exactly right. The MR headline (and most headlines I've read on this today, in fact) have it wrong. The court ruled specifically on the driver's use of his hands on the device while driving. Please read the court ruling in its entirety (linked from the original article, and only 8 very-readable pages without a lot of legalese).
Is it illogical, then, to permit the use of hands on a Garmin device? It certainly would be more logical to prohibit touching the screen of any device while driving, and I would support such a rule.
But there is a difference between a phone used for navigation purposes and a dedicated navigation device. If you're touching your Garmin (ooooh, that sounds dirty!) you're extremely unlikely to have to clear an alarm, clear a text message, and see that you have 42 fb messages before touching the "Re-route" button, whereas this is an extremely common scenario on a phone. It's far easier to get distracted with a phone-as-nav and find your mind wandering away from driving task for 2-3 seconds. With a dedicated navigation device the distraction is likely to be a second or less.
Of course with "dedicated" navigation devices getting features like music players and speakerphone functions, now that line is blurring as well. I'd prefer to keep all drivers' hands on the wheel as much as possible.
So why is it OK to fiddle with the car radio and climate control? I'll suggest that _most_ in-car radio and climate control systems have physical knobs and buttons* that can be found and controlled by touch, with minimal visual distraction. Their positions are fixed, and there's plenty of tactile feedback, so the driver doesn't have to look at them for very long, if at all. And there's zero chance of getting distracted by a text message.
One could make an analogous extension to phones with hard keypads vs. touchscreens. Back before it was specifically prohibited, I frequently dialed phone numbers on my Treo while driving, but it was 100% by touch, without ever looking at the keypad. I could never do that with my iPhone.
But it would be pretty difficult to split this hair, legislatively, so it'd be safest to just prohibit any manual interaction with any "device" while in the roadway. If you need to fiddle with the device, pull over.
I invested money in an aftermarket kit for my car so I can summon Siri, change tracks, etc., using my original steering wheel buttons, so I never have to touch my phone or look at it while I'm driving. And when I need to fiddle with it, I have my passenger do it, or I pull over.
* on this note, I find the Tesla's 17" touchscreen to be a bad precedent. It's going to be way worse than a phone wrt potential for extended driver distraction. Any distraction from the actual task of driving needs to be fixed-position, tactile, immediate, and single purpose.
"Sucks" is in the eye of the beholder, but yes, Waze won't let you do certain things while you're moving without you clicking an extra button that proclaims to it that you're a passenger.
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Windshield mounts are illegal (yes, there is a tiny exception space, but it's not anyplace a sane person would mount a phone or GPS) in California and (last I checked) Minnesota.
Exactly. They went for sweeping instead of logical and reasonable application of the law.
What about regular dedicated GPS, actual paper maps or written directions on paper??
These are necessary activities in driving. Texting and holding a phone to one's head is not (not with availability of hands free headsets, wired or Bluetooth).
If they care about distractions so much, why aren't they banning billboards (especially lit up, animated ones) and attention-getting car modifications (boom boom stereos, lights, spinning hubcaps, exaggerated exhaust, car alarms, etc).
Inconsistent application of the law is as damaging as irrational sweeping application.
BTW: the people that coded this mobile view... Did you ever attempt to select text on a mobile device??? This sucks.
Well, for staters, police would have to actually be capable of being found guilty of anything at all. It happens, in extremes, but rarely. The smaller issues (which are horrendous en mass) are essentially invisible. Police have so many exceptions (both legally binding and on the good old boy system) that they get away with far more than anyone else ever could. When caught, they rarely have to pay the consequences. On top of that, with all this extra "permission" to do what regular citizens cannot, they have a massive amount of power over average persons (being armed, having authority and being frequently intimidating by default). The whole establishment itself is a problem.
So, like someone else said: good luck with that. The authority doesn't police itself and it exempts itself from the things it polices in others. How do you make this a fair system and force them to set good examples when the system itself determines policy? You can't use antisocial people to change their behaviors. They're in charge.
Anyway, back to the topic: distraction is bad. Yet industry seems hell bent on producing as much distraction as it can. It increases daily. It's called advertising. It's also called "loud pipes" (which don't actually save lives) and pimped-out/tricked-out car modifications. The merchandise is legal but the use of it is ... very inconsistently regulated.
Advertising is barely regulated at all.
California... Such a mix of good, awesome... and stupid.
Pretty much what the court decided. The law was not written to specifically prohibit texting or talking, but made it a misdemeanor to be distracted while driving by mobile devices that require the use of your hands. (Seems nobody read the actual decision. If you do you'd see, given the way the law reads, that they didn't have a lot of logical options.)
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I guess that makes me insane (new definitions of words every day). When I use my Garmin it goes in the allowed corner of the windshield, where it works just fine and doesn't obscure my forward vision. Based on what I see around me on the road, it seems I am one in about a thousand who even knows where you are allowed to mount a GPS in California.
Lower left (driver's side) corner of the windshield is hardly a place that a sane person would really find horrible issues with. Perhaps not as "in your face" and thus "convenient" as mounting something in the center (of not right in front of you), but it's must less distracting and in the way that way, and still can be used decently well (and perhaps even better when it comes to left-handed people).
There are plenty of traffic laws on specific topics beyond just reckless driving/endangerment. Most traffic violations have specific criteria and levels of punishment. If you look at the terms, they're slightly ambiguous. In this case they outlawed something that was previously legal. Can you explain why you're concerned that they did this via a new law rather than by amending the definition of the older one?
He said better than average, not above the median.
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I read nanny state and that they should rely on pre-existing laws. You offered little in the way of reasoning one way or the other, then of course the condescending "everyone else is a sheep" attitude. Those posts are a projection of opinions. They don't really contain information or logic.
common sense
It should be obvious to everyone that this guy got ticketed because he had the phone in his HAND, two big no nos (hand off the wheel and eyes off the road). If he had it mounted to his dash (windshield mounts are also illegal in CA) he wouldn't of had a problem. Distracted driving has always been illegal everywhere and all it takes is some common sense to know much you able to do while driving.
It should be obvious to everyone that this guy got ticketed because he had the phone in his HAND, two big no nos (hand off the wheel and eyes off the road). If he had it mounted to his dash (windshield mounts are also illegal in CA) he wouldn't of had a problem. Distracted driving has always been illegal everywhere and all it takes is some common sense to know much you able to do while driving.
Basically I think these state legislatures are just biding their time, and making some laws that make it look like they are trying to do something about using smartphones while driving. They just need to get through the next 10 years or so until a lot of cars will be sold as self-driving cars, and these laws will be moot. They're pretty unenforceable anyway, unless the cop can snap a picture of you holding a cell phone through an untinted window so it's very clear (like what happened to Maria Shriver). They do need to get the self-driving cars on the road as quickly as possible though.
Why don't you explain why more laws are better? It is all reckless driving and could be prosecuted as such.
More laws = more govt to enforce them.
It's not complicated to understand.